There was no telling what he would do. His knowing would only make a horrible situation worse.
Aye, now Duncan was here. Not by choice, but due to his loyalty to Symon.
Symon. Oh, God. She squeezed the embroidery tight within her palm. Tears burned her throat. Never again would she find comfort in her brother’s arms. In his strength. In his compassion. Or in the sage advice of a brother who’d suffered his own personal misery when he’d learned of her decision to become Frasyer’s mistress.
By agreeing to Frasyer’s demand, she’d thought to protect her father and to save their home. Never had she imagined her choice would one day play a role in ending Symon’s life.
But it had.
She shouldn’t have gone to visit him that day, but she had wanted to give Symon her embroidered gift.
Now he lay dead.
A sob racked her body. Then another. As tears rolled down her cheeks, she turned to stare through the window where the cold gray of the night stole toward blackness.
She had to get out of here. To push past the pain, to remember that more than her brother’s life was at stake. Her father depended on her.
Somehow, she must find the Bible.
Steps outside had her whirling to face the door. She shoved the embroidery into her pocket as the slide of a wooden bar clattered through the dungeon. Guards’ voices murmured in the dank corridor.
A scuffle.
Terse voices shouted in argument.
Duncan! Isabel ran to the door. She pressed her ear against the cold wood and strained to hear.
Moments later, the voices stilled. Boots scraped to a stop outside her cell.
She stumbled back.
Wood grated as the bar to her door was lifted, then opened with a vicious shove. Yellowed torchlight raced through the blackness and one of the guards stepped into view.
“Here.” He held out a half loaf of hard bread and a wedge of cheese.
She forced herself to step forward and accept the fare as if nothing was amiss. They hadn’t seen Duncan. Another prisoner must have offered resistance.
“Move back,” the guard ordered.
In silence, Isabel complied.
He jerked the door shut.
Darkness, cold and ugly, closed in around her. A cool breeze crawled over her skin. Outside, not even a star welcomed the oncoming night.
A shiver rippled through her as she laid the unappetizing food aside, her hunger having long since fled. She tracked the guards’ movements by the slam of doors as they went from cell to cell to deliver the evening fare.
At last, except for the whistle of the wind and the moans of prisoners lost in their own misery, a morbid silence claimed the dungeon.
Like that of a living tomb.
Where was Duncan? With each passing second that he didn’t return, her fear grew. She’d lost Symon. Her father’s life was in jeopardy. She couldn’t lose him as well. “Where are you, Duncan?”
Seconds crawled past.
The passage of time building her fear with destructive intent.
When Isabel thought she’d go mad, the bar grated. She whirled as the door scraped open. Framed within the entry by the flicker of distant torchlight, Duncan appeared as if he were a defiant god challenging the world.
And as unreachable.
After a cautious glance into the corridor, he jumped down and shut the door. Darkness consumed them. “Isabel?”
The fear she’d harbored at his safe return vanished, the concern in his voice further weakening her resolve to remain aloof. She ran to him, and his arms wrapped around her without hesitation. His familiar touch unfurled an ache deep inside, a longing for Duncan that would never fade.
“Thank God you are safe. You were gone so long. I thought the guards might have caught you,” she admitted, amazed she sounded so composed when she felt anything but.
He released her. “As if it would matter?”
“Yes,” she breathed, wanting only to tell him how much. Or how she still loved him. And always would.
He gave a snort of disbelief. “Worry not, lass. I will help you escape. I have given my vow. I, unlike others, keep my word.”
She flinched, grateful for the dark. Yet, she deserved his anger. But she couldn’t change the past, nor, it seemed, the future. To explain the truth would not only expose her father’s shame, but if Frasyer ever learned that Duncan knew her reason for leaving him, as he’d vowed on that fated day three years ago, he would use every bit of his power to hunt Duncan down and kill him. A vow she knew however ill achieved, Frasyer would keep.
“Believe what you will.” She took a step back, too aware of him, of how her need for him had grown to a dangerous level.
“Aye, I will.” His voice was grim. “Come.”
Isabel followed him toward the door. If this was only about her, she might risk braving Frasyer’s wrath. Now, her father, as well as the fate of the rebels, depended on her, too.
Once she’d retrieved her mother’s Bible, she would bring it to Lord Monceaux, King Edward’s Scottish adviser. A fair man her father had stated on many an occasion. Now she would entrust the English lord with the greatest of tests.
That of her father’s life.
What would she do if the Bible wasn’t in Frasyer’s chamber? When she found the Bible, how would she deliver it to England? Stealing a horse was a crime punishable by hanging, but lack of time demanded desperation.
Not that it would change her fate. Once her father was freed, Frasyer still held documentation that would ruin her father. Frasyer would use this information to continue blackmailing her to remain as his mistress. Whether she lived within his chambers or his dungeon, the latter to prove his complete control over her, he would never allow Isabel her freedom.
Duncan opened the door and glanced back. Torchlight spilled over Isabel. Her wide, expressive eyes, haunted by the loss of her brother, watched him. For one weak moment, he was tempted to hold her and promise he would protect her always, but he quelled the urge.
He gestured her forward. “Let us be gone.” His tone was deliberately rough.
When she continued to stare at him, vulnerable and lost, he caught her hand. He silently cursed himself at the jolt of awareness that swept through him from a mere touch. A heat that betrayed logic. He didn’t need to feel any connection with her or of how right it still felt to be in her presence.
Outside her cell, he led her to a dimly lit corner beneath the stairs subtly shielding a door to yet another chamber. From the lack of grating at the door, the cell beyond was designed to deprive prisoners of light. God knew what other atrocities to deliver pain lay within.
“Why are we stopping here?” she asked, clearly confused.
He retrieved the bag of clothes he’d hidden behind a barrel of water. “Put these on.”
She opened the sack, removed the garments and glanced up at him with surprise. “Garb for a page?”
“You are needing a disguise. I doubt they will be allowing you to pass through the castle otherwise.” He pointed to the darkened corner beneath the stairs where he’d hidden while the guards had made their rounds. “Change over there.”
After a brief hesitation, she slipped into the blackened nook.
The rustle of her gown assured him she was stripping at a fast pace. As he waited, an errant gust of wind sent the torch in a wild jig. For a second, he caught a backlit view of the tempting curve of her bared breasts.